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Sumit SinghalSumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.

Fun Finder in Shanghai, China by 100architects

100architects was commissioned to develop an interactive installation for the Winter Festival 2015 of KTGA (Kick the Gong Around), a company specialized in organizing immersive events and festivals as Narrative Environments, physical or virtual spaces in which stories can unfold.

The project took place in an unfinished structure of a shopping mall right in Shanghai downtown, at Xintiendi, one of the most glamorous streets of China.

The unfinished mall opened its doors for becoming a semipublic space to host the KTGA winter festival 2015.

For this specific event, KTGA and the event sponsor, PERRIER WATER, requested us to create a vivid journey across detailed spaces, building a unique experience that would remain in visitors minds forever.

In order to achieve that, we reinterpreted the concepts of installation and interactivity. On one hand, morphing the proposal from a simple installation into a people’s attractor, catching the attention of visitors, and on the other hand, running away from trendy high-tech interactions, and, instead, focusing on a simplistic vivid journey across spaces as generator of the attraction itself, reducing the meaning of journey to its bare minimum: the path you journey through.

Therefore, the installation was conceived as a signage project, but rather than concentrating it on the destinations (different spaces across the venue which one could reach), we opted for emphasizing the paths themselves, creating unique visual experiences for each path, prioritizing the enjoyment of the way over the destination.

Seeking to maximize the visual impact, the project was displayed in both, 2D and 3D paths combined together, beginning with a three-dimensional sculptural signage, which would colonize the central void of the venue to make it visible from any place, and materialized with colored nylon strings. Those strings would provide first hints about destinations to reach.

Once the 3D stripes collide with the floor, they become a two-dimensional splash of vivid colors invading the whole floor with funny and intriguing patterns that would provide second hints about the destinations. Those 2D stripes were materialized with PVC vinyl stuck on the floor.